On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 23:14:24 -0500, Andrew Nowicki
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Jens Wilkinson wrote:
>
>>Is that the usual meaning of correlative? I thought it
>>simply means a word related to another word, like
>>"either" and "or", that are used in correlation with
>>one another. But in Eo, it seems to mean something
>>different, maybe like "pro-forms," or at least a
>>subset of pro-forms.
>
>This is also my understanding. It seems that
>Esperanto expanded the meaning of the correlatives.
This is the modern meaning of the word. Dr. Z would have been familiar with
the classical meaning, which is what he used. In a number of languages
there are related series of words, though the schema is usually incomplete:
here-there-where hither-thither-whither hence-thence-whence
that-what
kto-shto kak-tak
are-kare-dare kono-dono
And so forth. That's what Z was up to: just reproducing a gimmick you find
especially in classical languages.
>Sona Correlatives:
>http://www.sonayagema.org/eng/sona8.html
>
No. These are the basic morphemes (most of them, anyway). They are not in
any real sense correlatives, though they can produce the meanings of
regular correlatives.
One of the big differences between correlatives and compounds is that the
elements of a compound may be analyzed, but they aren't truly morphemic.
For example, the prefix elements in Eo correlatives have no separate
existence: i-, ti-, cxi-, etc. aren't morphemes in their own right, and
neither are -am, -om, -al, -el, etc. (For that matter, -a, -e, -o don't
have quite their normal values either.) Similarly, h-, th-, and wh- from my
English examples have no independent existence any more than -ere, -ence,
and -ither do.
Steve